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GDP, jobs heading in wrong direction

The Atlanta Federal Reserve bank has a GDP monitor called GDPNow. It gives a continuous reading on current GDP.

The reading this week was lowered to 0.0% from 0.2% for the Q1 of 2015. The official first look at GDP will come from the BEA at the end of April.

The fact that Chair Yellen along with a handful of Fed governors are still speaking of a June to Sept. rate rise seems to be disingenuous. Atlanta Fed governor Dennis Lockhart whose office runs GDPNow is one of the voting Fed heads calling for rate rise soon. Guess he doesn’t trust the data his website is publishing.

As the dollar strengthens, which weakens exports, and Americans reign in their retail spending for the last 4 months, the fact that the Fed can still jawbone about raising rates tells me the next move would be symbolic or political and not economically feasible.

Friday’s jobs number for March is only more ammunition for no rate rise in 2015. The 126K was half the number expected and revisions took another 79K jobs created off the table in Jan. and Feb.

Interesting how all this bad news comes out when US equity exchanges are closed for trading due to Good Friday holiday.